


Forever Young

by clockheartedcrocodile



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Awkward Hugs, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Flashbacks, Grief/Mourning, Insecurity, Past Child Abuse, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-Canon Fix-It, Rivalry, Team Dynamics, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-11
Updated: 2019-07-11
Packaged: 2020-06-26 04:52:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19760983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockheartedcrocodile/pseuds/clockheartedcrocodile
Summary: After a particularly violent disagreement with Thor leaves the Benatar stranded in space for a few days, Peter Quill finds himself struggling to keep himself from falling apart.





	Forever Young

**Author's Note:**

> I felt a pressing need to show the Guardians, and Quill, a little love post-Endgame.

There’s a god pacing the bridge.

Peter Quill can hear him from all the way up here, in the sill of a porthole halfway up the wall in what passes for the ship’s sickbay. He’s got one leg up on the sill, the other dangling free, his eyes full of stars as he stares out into the black. Tears for Fears warbles through the earbuds hanging around his neck, running a distant counterpoint to Thor’s footfalls.

Clarice and Terry rest warm against his hips, itching to be fired. It takes a lot of goddamn restraint to keep them holstered.

Quill slips both earbuds into his ears and lets the chorus chase itself in circles around his head. _Shout . . . shout . . . let it all out . . . these are the things I can do without . . ._

The chorus beats with the valves of his heart and the pulsing of distant quasars. It’s intense, almost too intense, but Quill could use a little intense right now so he turns up the volume and leans back against the curve of the porthole.

The _Benatar_ is too quiet these days. He can’t hear them- not with his head full of Roland Orzabal- but Quill knows the rest of the crew is somewhere in her belly, just as space-crazy as he is.

Well. Not space-crazy. Just suffering from the same doldrums any crew will hit after several days stuck in a drifting ship with barely enough juice in her for life support.

Quill’s eyes narrow. He turns up the volume. _Shout. Shout._

It’s Thor’s fault. Quill’s scans had caught onto a signal, finally, after weeks of pinging the stars and waiting for the rebound. The signal had bounced back from a small, dirty little planet a thousand light years away, and Quill had leapt out of his seat and hugged Groot till he got splinters and announced to the whole ship that he’d found her, he’d found _her,_ he’d found-

And Thor had stood up. And Thor had said no.

Quill took the controls anyway, with a firm admonition that he was the captain, and any disagreement on Thor’s part would be considered a mutiny. Of course, that hadn’t stopped Thor from taking the controls _back_. They bickered their way right into quantum asteroid field and that, as they say, was that.

Quill supposes he should be grateful. Last time he had a dick-measuring contest in an asteroid field it had cost him the _Milano,_ a ship he’d been flying since he was ten annuals old. Yondu had given him that ship. He’d loved her.

Quill hasn’t had a decent shower in days, the food’s running out, and the oxygen’s following close behind, but hey, at least the _Benatar_ is still in one piece. Ordinarily Rocket would have her flying good as new within the hour, but this time he’d need to MacGyver most of the materials needed for the patch job himself.

Quill scowls. His hands twitch in his lap.

None of this would have happened if Thor hadn’t been trying to undermine Quill’s captaincy at every turn. Goddamn saboteur. If he isn’t the captain, Quill’s got no chance of holding this ragtag crew- his little family- together. Losing the captaincy means losing the Guardians. Losing everything.

Quill isn’t 100% a dumbass. He knows he can’t match up to Thor. Thor may look human, but he ain’t,

_“and I don’t trust anythin’ that looks like what it ain’t.”_

_Kraglin’s got his boot on Peter’s larynx. He digs the heel in hard and listens to him gurgle._

_“You look Xandarian, Quill. Creeps me out.”_

_Peter is nine and the cap’n is soft on him. Kraglin is fourteen and he says he’s gonna be quartermaster one day. He’s also the only human-looking motherfucker on the ship._

_Peter latched on real quick._

_Stupid idea, in retrospect. Peter, squirming under the boot, chokes when Kraglin leans down and sneers in his face. His breath smells like Mom’s hospital room._

_“C’mon,” he says, snapping open a knife right there in the crowded mess hall. “I wanna see that red blood of yours.”_

_The crew rouses to the sound like dogs scenting the air. Peter hears whoops and hollers of encouragement. He’s turning blue in the face. His fingers scrabble uselessly at the floor._

_He remembers what the cap’n said about fighting dirty._

_Here’s whatcha do f’someone takes yer music, Quill._

_Kraglin’s eyes rove Peter’s skin, picking a vein, and when he leans in for the cut Peter twists his hips upwards and kicks Kraglin square in the nards._

_It’s hilarious. Kraglin shrieks and goes cross-eyed, bending double as he claps both hands over his crotch. He wobbles and Peter takes advantage, overbalancing him as he scrambles to his feet. They’re both gasping for breath, and Kraglin hits the ground hard, spitting and gurgling and curling up like a dying orloni._

_The crew screams with laughter, some of them shoving others out of the way to get a better view of the chaos, and Peter feels a surge of delirious joy overwhelm him._

_“Fuck ‘im up!” Horuz hoots from the galley door._

_“Put a boot in his ribs, Pete!”_

_“Kick ‘im in the dick again! Make ‘im shit his britches!”_

_Everyone is laughing. Peter wipes his nose on his wrist. “They’re laughin’ at us,” he says quietly, so only Kraglin hears. “They’re always laughin’ at us. They don’t care who wins.”_

_Kraglin fixes him with one watering eye and groans._

_“Why’d you fuckin’,” he chokes, but the rest of his sentence is lost in the jeers from Tullk and Brahl. Kraglin plants both hands on the floor and pushes himself up, seemingly with great effort. Peter’s heart sinks. He didn’t drop him. He didn’t finish the fight._

_“Pup fight!” Horuz laughs, and Kraglin goes for Peter’s belly._

_Peter leaps back, clumsy and unprepared for a real knife fight, but the swing goes wide and Kraglin staggers when he tries to right himself. Peter goes for a gut punch but can’t quite make it count- his fist impacts Kraglin’s leathers to no effect and he twists out of the way as Kraglin tries to jam his knife into Peter’s back. They circle each other, Peter taking two steps for Kraglin’s every one._

_He knew kids like Kraglin, back on Terra. Kids that killed little frogs that ain’t done nothing. Peter blacked their eyes for it._

_Kraglin may look Terran, but he ain’t. He’s a goddamn alien, and he’s just a kid._

_Spaceborn kids grow up thin. They get pale and reedy and bug-eyed, like those blind, cave-dwelling fish Peter’d read about in school. Kraglin’s one of those. He’s got the lean look of a kid who grew up in the black. It don’t help that he’s on half-rations, while Peter gets the full plate._

_Peter’s another mouth to feed on a ship already stretched thin on supplies. He ain’t blind to it._

_It’s his own damn fault for offering to share._

_Peter’s wised up. He knows all that food ain’t a blessing- cap’n’s just fattening him up. He said, didn’t he? Folks eat folks out here in the black, when the food is scarce and ain’t nobody around for light years. If anyone’s eating anyone, Peter is the first to go._

_At least all those stories have one thing in common. They only start eating folks when the ships are dead, and the crew is alone and_

stranded, with no hope of outside rescue. Quill tilts his face against the cool glass of the porthole and thinks about kicking Thor in the nards. There’s no way Quill could hope to take him on in honest combat, god against demigod. Thor would do a hell of a lot more than pull a knife on him, and he wasn’t as belly-pinched as Kraglin, neither.

That’s another thing Quill hates about Thor. He’s enjoyed good eating on Terra, probably on all that homestyle food that used to keep Quill up at night when he was living on the _Eclector._ M&M pancakes, probably. Mac and cheese. Dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets.

Quill wets his lips and groans, his face squeaking a little farther down the glass. He wishes he could remember the taste of Terran food. Not that Rocket would let him at it without some smart-ass remark about his weight, like Quill hasn’t caught him digging through the literal garbage more than once.

Quill yanks the earbuds out of his ears with a little more ferocity than the music warrants. So what if he’s let himself go a little- that’s a goddamn _blessing_ in space. Rocket’s got no right to be talking to him that way. Besides, it’s not like it’s easy keeping himself trim these days without Gamora inviting him to spar with her, or racing him through obstacle courses on the asteroid belts of distant moons. The rush of adrenaline, the joy, the eagerness to please, all had wildly surpassed the taxing physical strain. He had laughed as he launched himself between asteroids. She had smiled as she leapt to keep up with him.

And they carried on that way, easily, unreservedly. She held back when they sparred for his sake, he held back when they raced for hers, and they whet themselves against each other like iron sharpening iron.

Quill’s having trouble breathing. He steadies himself, deep breaths in and out, and worries his earbuds between his fingers.

Four annuals was not enough.

There’s a twinge of hunger in his belly and Quill latches onto it, eager for a distraction from the downward spiral of his own thoughts. Not that there’s anything he can do to sate that twinge- they’ve got every scrap of food rationed, down to the last box of Gear Shift drops. Quill sighs and twists the gauges on his boots, hopping neatly off the porthole sill and letting the thrusters lower him down to the deck.

Nothing for it but to sleep off the hunger. Quill’s been doing a lot of sleeping these days.

The _Benatar_ is an M-ship, nowhere near the size of the _Eclector._ She’s big enough for the Guardians and no bigger. Quill has to cross through the cramped confines of her underbelly to get to his quarters, such as they are. He passes no one, hears nothing but the vibration of the _Benatar’s_ engines.

Quill is just about to cross the sealed entrance to cargo storage, hands already itching to put those earbuds in and drown out the silence, when he hears a quiet scuffling from beyond the reinforced door. Quill hesitates at the end of the hall and backtracks. He feels a nasty twinge of suspicion as he punches in the override access code.

The rubber seals retract with a hiss and the door rolls back, admitting Quill into the darkened interior. The door slides shut behind him. Quill crosses his arms. “Rocket,” he says, his voice heavy with warning.

Rocket’s tail puffs up for a moment, surprised, before relaxing again. He withdraws his hand from one of the cargo crates by the back wall and leans against it instead, mirroring Quill’s folded arms. “What’sa matter, Pete?” he says to the floor. His whiskers twitch minutely. “Ship’ll be fixed soon if I have anythin’ to say about it. You don’t trust us or somethin’? You comin’ in here to skim somethin’ off for yourself, no one any the wiser?”

“Rocket,” Quill repeats.

Rocket seems to wilt in front of him. “I’m hungry, is all,” he mutters. “You know.”

Quill knows.

He sighs, pinches the bridge of his nose between two fingers. How Yondu managed a crew of several hundred, he’ll never know. Right now, Quill feels an overwhelming urge to punt the little rodent out the nearest airlock.

He doesn’t. Instead, he waves Rocket aside and cracks open the cargo crate himself. “These are supposed to be rationed out,” he says, in the sternest voice he can muster. He pushes aside a couple layers of sealant foam and holds up a single ripe janafruit for Rocket’s inspection. “Halfsies?”

Rocket’s nose twitches hopefully. Quill knows he won’t say no.

They lean up against the crate together, Quill all of 6’2’’ and Rocket down by his waist, and split the janafruit in silence. Quill peels back the thick rind of his half, exposing the fleshy interior. The underside of the peel is spongey with soft spines, and the separation of peel from fruit exposes innumerable small pinpricks, from which juice is now rising steadily. Quill eats it fast, slice by slice, so as not to waste the flavor.

“Now, this,” says Rocket. He licks his lips with one long, pink tongue. “This is a real treat.”

“Surprised you didn’t rinse it off first.”

“You’re on thin fuckin’ ice, Pete.”

Quill grins and swallows another slice whole. Fruit, _fresh_ fruit at that, is a damn luxury out in the black. The kind of thing you could only find on a diplomat’s interstellar cruiser, or a merchant vessel with their holds packed tight with refrigerated shipping crates. “Don’t tell He-Man about it.”

“I don’t tell him _everything_.”

“I thought you liked him,” Quill says. He starts picking at the underside of the peel with one fingernail.

Rocket, now lapping stray juice from his jowls, doesn’t respond right away. Quill’s noticed that. He doesn’t fly off the cuff the way he used to, doesn’t say whatever’s on his mind. He’s . . . careful, around Quill and the others, in a way he never was before.

“Sure I do,” he says finally. “I gave him that eye, didn’t I? What’s your point?”

“Oh yeah,” says Quill, snapping his fingers in recollection. “The eye. What happened to that thing, anyway?”

“The meathead chucked it after Thanos. Waste of a good eye, if you ask me.”

“It was a terrible eye. It was literally a shitty eye.”

“Yeah, well, I lifted it off a guy on Contraxia. What’d he expect?”

Quill chuckles grimly. When he thinks of Contraxia it’s with the kind of itchy eagerness a long-clean addict feels when he walks through the bad part of town. While it seems obvious in retrospect that Rocket would’ve spent more than his fair share of time there given their inclusive policy on serving non-humanoids, Quill nonetheless doesn’t like to think about it. The little dude had lived five annuals without the Guardians watching his back. Anything could’ve happened.

“Why’re you always askin’ me about Thor, anyway?” Rocket asks after a moment.

Quill runs his tongue along his teeth, grimaces at the aftertaste of the fruit. “Asking? Who’s asking?”

“Don’t play dumb with me, Pete. That pissing contest of yours nearly got us killed.”

“Yeah, like you’ve ever been one to turn down a pissing contest.”

“Times change. People grow up,” Rocket says testily. He crumples up the janafruit rind in one paw and shoves it into his pocket. “The Peter Quill I remember ain’t the kind of Peter Quill who throws a hissy fit anytime someone mouths off to him.”

There’s a cold knot of nervousness in Quill’s belly. He does his best to ignore it. “I ain’t throwing any kind of hissy fit.”

“Uh-huh,” Rocket grunts. “Listen, Pete. You’re my captain. But _shit_ you gotta man up and be the kinda captain you used to be. I mean,” he pokes at Quill’s abdomen with one long, black claw, _“look_ at this.”

Quill instinctive sucks in his belly. “Hey!” he snaps. “I’m the same goddamn captain that I ever was, maybe you just can’t see it ‘cause you’re lookin’ back with rose-tinted goggles or something.”

There’s a thought- that Quill might be looked by someone, _anyone,_ through rose-tinted goggles. Rocket snorts at his dumbfounded expression and holds up his paws in a gesture of surrender.

“All I’m sayin’,” he says, and again, there’s that uncharacteristic gentleness in his voice that unnerves Quill so much, “is that when I met you, you had a hell of an inferiority complex, and I only started _liking_ you when I thought you’d kicked that habit for good.”

Quill grimaces. What could he possibly say? That he was only half a god, (and not even that anymore,) while Thor was godly power incarnate? That he was impatient, volatile, and scared, while Thor was calm, and resolute, and burning with a kind of inner resolve that Quill could never imagine cultivating?

“Time was,” he mutters through his teeth, “you’d jump on any opportunity to undermine my keepin’ this crew together.”

“Times change,” Rocket repeats. “People grow up.”

They look at each other. Quill looking down to meet Rocket’s eyes, Rocket looking up to meet his.

“You ever gonna give me my scarf back?” Quill asks after a beat.

Rocket lets out a hoarse little chuckle and thumps Quill’s leg with his tail as he walks past. “Not a chance, a-hole,” he says. “Thanks for the fruit.”

Quill doesn’t follow him when he disappears out into the hall. He folds his arms a little tighter, the leather creaking as his fists clench. The rodent’s right. He’s been rolling over and letting Thor have his way with him, and he’s supposed to be the goddamn _captain._ Quill is the leader, Quill makes the decisions, and

_eleven is more than old enough to make your own decisions,” someone whispers from behind him._

_Peter is eleven and he’s loitering outside a junker’s yellow-curtained tent, wondering if there’s anything he can steal that might help him get back to the_ Eclector. _He’s been wandering for hours, desperately seeking a familiar flash of red leather in the crowd. Nothing. The bazaars on Knowhere are packed tight with aliens of every race and creed, all of them ugly and hungry-looking and reeking of that particular stench that comes from urban crowds._

_They’ve left him. Yondu’s crew actually left him._

_It’s only after he hears that low, soft voice from behind him that he realizes the bazaar has fallen silent. The cacophony of people talking over each other has all but evaporated. In its wake he can hear the distant sound of drilling, as the ever-present mining and construction crews continue excavating a new slum in the dead Celestial’s ear canal._

_The sudden silence is far more frightening than the noise. Peter ducks further in the shadows and looks around, his hand on his knife. “There’s no need for that,” says the voice, and Peter sees a man._

_The silent bazaar, which a moment ago had been packed to capacity, is almost empty, as though people have fled in a hurry. Those who remain simply stand to the side, shaken, or shrink back and draw the curtains on their shabby market stalls. The man behind Peter is standing quite at ease in the middle of the street, flanked on either side by two rows of armed Krylorian guards._

_Peter eyes flick from man to man, memorizing every detail in the spaces between his breaths. They’re armed with weapons he doesn’t recognize, but he can see the dirty green batteries in the chambers of their blasters, suggesting plasma. The man in the center- the one who had spoken, the one they’re guarding- is dressed far too well for Knowhere. Almost cartoonishly well, like a wealthy merchant who just docked and got lost looking for his hotel. Peter recognizes the white, brackish A’askavarian salamander fur lining the stranger’s collar. No guns at his hips, no knives. His eyes stare out of his face like a man in a costume mask._

_Peter is gonna rob this guy blind._

_He takes his hand off the knife. His lip wobbles as he pretends to hold back tears. “Who are you?” he says sharply, wiping his nose on the back of his wrist. His voice cracked when he said it. It’s been cracking a lot lately. “How do you know how old I am?”_

_“I have an eye for these things,” says the stranger. He makes a funny little flicking motion with his hands, and the two closest Krylorians fall in as the stranger steps forward._

_Peter takes another step back. “I said, who are you?”_

_“I am the Collector,” says the Collector, with a quiet sort of amusement. “You may call me Taneleer. Where are you from, Peter?”_

_“I’m from Earth.”_

_“Everyone is from Earth, dear. I mean what is the name of the planet where you were born?”_

_Peter licks his lips, swallows. “Terra. But I live on the_ Eclector. _Red faction. I wear the flames.”_

_He tugs his coat tighter around him to punctuate the point. His badge gleams greenish-yellow in the phosphorescent light._

_The Collector lazily raises both hands. “I beg your pardon,” he simpers. “I did not know you were a Ravager.”_

_Peter stands a little taller. “Yeah,” he says. He tries to spit on the ground and it just dribbles off his chin._

_The Collector crouches to meet Peter’s eye. His salamander skin coat brushes the bone-paved streets, but somehow, the bristles come away clean. “Do you know what we do here on Knowhere? Do you know my business? My trade?”_

_Peter shakes his head._

_“I would be honored if you accompanied me and my entourage,” says the Collector. He holds out one pale hand, palm up. “We are taking a turn about the lanes and passages of the city before ascending to its highest levels. Would you like to look down on the bazaars from above?”_

_He would. He really would._

_And Yondu’s not coming back for him._

_Peter doesn’t take his hand- he’s not some sort of child- but he does step forward, and lets the Krylorian guards fall in behind him. He can see the scars spiderwebbing the sides of their scalps now. Slaves. The Collector gives Peter an oily, approving look, and together they continue down the lane, flanked on either side by Krylorians._

_Peter can hear people whispering as they pass. Everywhere they go, people shuffle to the side, their voices hushed as the Collector’s procession makes its way through the city. Peter finds himself immeasurably grateful, not for the first time, that Yondu had shelled out for the good translators. Peter only spoke one dialect of Terran, after all._

_(They took him to the Tailor for his first- and only- surgery. They laid him out on the slab and put a leather strap between his teeth, holding him down while the Tailor stitched the translators under his skin. One in his neck and one behind his ear, with only a swallow of some sort of gritty rum to dull the pain._

_He later found out it was moonshine distilled with engine coolant. The coughing was almost worse than the surgery.)_

_The Collector likes to talk. His voice is cool and dry and hypnotic. He talks about the Tivan Group, and the extensive mining operation excavating organic matter from within Knowhere. Peter tries to get a glimpse under his coat, seeking pockets, keys, exposed purses. There’s nothing._

_The Collector’s procession is going uphill. Up the smooth, cartilaginous slopes that bisect the A’askavariian district, until they reach the lip of one of the crooked slumtowers that cast their shadows over the town. He stands shoulder to shoulder with Peter, looking out over the sputtering oil lamps and filthy bone-matter tenements of western Knowhere._

_His hand is on Peter’s shoulder. His voice is in Peter’s head._

_“The Tivan Group has found success here,” says the Collector, in that low, rough-soft purr of his. “Mining is a dangerous, lucrative trade. I would not attempt it anywhere but here. Knowhere is unique.”_

_Peter’s having a bit of trouble keeping his eyes open. His feet ache from walking the uneven streets. He hasn’t eaten in a while._

_“Bone matter is easy enough to harvest,” the Collector continues. His hand is on Peter’s shoulders but two fingers brush his neck where it rises above his collar, and it’s annoying, but Peter is far too tired to think about moving away. “Drilling for spinal fluid is more of a risk. Even a single decanter might sell for 50,000 units or more.”_

_Peter blinks blearily at the lights below him. The lamps are made from oil and fat, and burn in a wide array of colors. The lights are blurring together. Handfuls of stars, scattered through the streets of Knowhere. Stars inside and out. Stars spinning around a dead Celestial’s skull. Around Peter’s skull. Like a cartoon coyote, hit with a cartoon hammer. What was the coyote’s name again?_

_A big, pale hand, like a white spider, is cupping the back of Peter’s head. A thumb is rubbing small circles at his temple, where the bone is weak._

_“The Celestials are old, and rare,” murmurs the Collector. “Older than I. Rarer than I.”_

_The Krylorian guards are lined up behind them. Their shadows fall across Peter’s back._

_“I don’t want to kill the golden goose,” comes the softest whisper. “But you must understand. You must try to see my position.”_

_“Quill!”_

_Peter’s eyelids are drooping closed. They snap open at the sound of his name._

_Cap’n._

_“Pete!”_

_There’s a snarl in that voice now. Peter hears that short, sharp whistle he knows so well, and sizzling hot Krylorian blood dampens the back of his leathers._

_“Oh dear,” murmurs the Collector._

_“Don’t turn around, Pete,” says another voice. Tullk this time._

_Peter turns around and sees that flicker of red light, that whistle piercing his brain as a yaka arrow pierces hearts, and it’s funny, he had no illusions about the kind of man Yondu was, but this is something different. This is something ugly. This is the first time he’s_

seen Yondu kill. They had been slaves, too. Yondu didn’t kill slaves, not if he could help it. He didn’t even flog insubordinates on his own ship, preferring to administer discipline through punitive beatdowns. Quill had been subjected to those once or twice. Like all forms of discipline on the _Eclector,_ they had been public. Yondu only ever beat him in front of the crew.

He misses him. He shouldn’t, but he does. He misses Yondu with clumsy, childlike desperation, the way he misses Mom.

Well. Not quite the way he misses Mom.

Quill raises his head at the sound of a whistle, distant and echoey in the bowels of the ship. Kraglin must be just as restless as Quill if he’s making that kind of noise. The sound is equal parts comforting and chilling, as though Kraglin’s whistle were Yondu’s ghost back to torment everyone who ever backtalked him. Quill tries not to think about it. It’s not easy.

It’s not fair, either.

It’s not fair that Quill’s alive and Yondu isn’t. It’s not fair that every time Quill sees Rocket tinkering away in the engine room he’s reminded of how much older he looks. How he’d been without the Guardians for five fucking annuals; almost a year longer than he’d known them in the first place. Despite Quill’s best efforts, the poor bastard had ended up alone. Again.

Quill should be 43. He’s goddamn 38. That’s not fair either.

It’s getting hard to think again. Quill digs his earbuds out of his pocket and spends a good minute and a half untangling them, his hands fumbling with the knots. He slots the earbuds into his ears and scrolls through the tracks, looking for something to dull the sound of that whistling.

He scrolls past “Rubberband Man” and “Dear Mr. Fantasy” before picking “Never,” by Moving Pictures. The sax screams in his ears. _I feel your heart, it’s beating time with mine._

Quill used to think he was a loser, but he’s not. He’s just an easy mark.

He wants a drink but they’re rationing that too, so he groans through his teeth and slams his hand hard against one of the shipping crates. He does it twice more for good measure.

Five goddamn years he should’ve had. Five years, gone. _Stolen._

Easy mark.

Quill’s still got the janafruit peel crushed in one hand. He throws it aside and lets the pulse of the song thrust him into movement, his boots shrieking on the metal floor as he spins. _Well you’re hot, hot, loaded like a gun. Oh you feel-_

Quill slams both hands hard against the wall and closes his eyes, heart jumping with adrenaline.

He’s fucking tired of having things stolen from him.

Thanos probably didn’t even remember Quill’s name. He burned Knowhere till the bones turned black, and it’s still burning. It has been burning for five years now. Taneleer Tivan is dead, if creatures such as he can die. Gamora stood among the flames and looked at him and loved him and Thanos _stole her from him._

It’s less about the dancing now and more about the movement. Dancing is better than unholstering his guns. Dancing is better than a lot of things.

Quill spins around and slams his back against the wall, sliding down it, head arched back. He thinks of Thor and his heart clenches. He’ll be damned if Thor steals his captaincy.

And that’s all it is in the end, a cycle of theft, because what else can you expect from one of life’s fucking losers. From Thor on the bridge to Meredith in her hospital room, the cancer consuming her, swallowing her, stealing her-

-and the synth’s getting to the good bit, Quill can feel the itch to move, the urge to _run_ -

-and when he thinks of cancer he thinks not of hospitals and EKG charts but of the warm, glittering eyes of Ego, holding out his hands to play catch, and the music is screaming _never never never_ as Quill hurls himself out into the corridor, spinning and leaping along its length. He can’t breathe for anger, can’t hear anything but _don’t you ever ever ever ever_ , because he was nothing more than a _battery_ to Ego, a battery Yondu didn’t need, a battery Yondu stole and kept and Ego _couldn’t imagine why_ , couldn’t fathom what was in Peter Quill that was worth stealing . . .

 _Oh you know he don’t love you like I do,_ wails through Quill’s earbuds. His palms skim the railings as he slings himself up two steps at a time, up the ladder to the bridge. He feels alive. He feels powerful.

He held an infinity stone without dying.

His put a bomb in the brain of the monster that put cancer in his mother.

He punched Thanos in the face. He went for the fucking _head._

Quill leaps the last few steps, chest heaving in time with the _never never never ever,_ and when he hoists himself breathlessly up onto the deck someone grabs the cord of his earbuds and yanks them out of his ears.

The music leaves him like air sucked into the vacuum of space, and reality rushes in to fill the gap. Quill squints bitterly up at Thor and stands up with all the dignity he can muster. It’s not much.

Thor is not a little man.

Thor is broad-shouldered and flaxen-haired and his one good eye gleams in his head like a diamond at the bottom of a mine shaft. He looks at Quill with a kind of careful wariness, as though Quill were an orloni cowering behind a toilet. He’s a big man- bigger than Quill- but soft and broad around the belly. His hair and beard are braided. He walks like an army of valkyrie ride at his back.

Quill wishes he could hate him. Just a little.

“I’m surprised you have time enough to dance,” says Thor. His voice is deep, but not rough, with none of that uneducated Ravager patois that sneaks into Quill’s speech so easily. “I would have thought you, as the _captain_ , would be thinking up ways that we might better repair the ship.”

“I would’ve thought you, as the _king,_ ” Quill sneers, “would know that sometimes there ain’t anything we can do but wait. Oh, I’m sorry, _ex-_ king.”

The Guardians are not rich, and Thor, riding with them, has dressed himself in grubby leather to match them, but the polish on his belt and the buckles on his boots betray his blood for what it is. Thor scoffs and turns away, settling into one of the _Benatar’s_ bridge chairs with a squeak of leather on leather. It’s Gamora’s seat. Quill says nothing.

“You’re trying to goad me,” Thor says. The look in his eye betrays his frustration. “Don’t. I’ve had enough of being goaded by you.”

“Tell me why you turned us away from that planet,” says Quill through his teeth, “and maybe I will.”

“We can’t go there.”

“Well, we’re gonna,” Quill snaps. “Gamora’s there.”

He had seen the signal. Thor had too. She hadn’t been signaling the Guardians- she had no reason to, not anymore- but that brief, dim flicker of a beacon may as well have burned brighter than the triple suns of Xandar for all the promise they held. For a moment, all the noise in Quill’s head had been silenced. Her name, _Gamora,_ sang through his mind like a strain of music.

“Quail,” says Thor.

“Quill.”

“There is no point in chasing this false Gamora. We should be searching for the soul stone,” this last he punctuates with an irritated exhalation through his nose. “Only the soul stone will bring her back. Only the soul stone can bring _anyone_ back. I swear it.”

“Oh yeah?” sneers Quill, and perhaps it comes out a bit more nastily than he meant it to but right now he doesn’t much care. He hurls himself roughly into Drax’s bridge chair and rotates it to face Thor, one leg up over the arm and the other stretched out in front of him in an appropriately confident posture. “S’funny, you know, s’really funny, because you _told_ me that the “natural order of magic” or whatever can’t hold without the infinity stones. You told me that with enough time and enormous magical force, they would reforge themselves like diamonds from the universe. Well, they had five years, and that guy on Titan-”

“Tony,” says Thor. There’s something ugly in his voice.

“Hmm?” Quill leans forward, tilting his head peevishly. “What was that?”

“Tony Stark. He lived on this ship for some time.”

 _When I was dead,_ Quill thinks. “Right,” he says aloud. “Tony Stark. You told me- again, you told me- that he snapped enough magic into the universe to reforge the stones ten times over. So we _went_ to Vormir. We _looked_.”

“It did reforge,” says Thor, squeezing one fist in the air before him as though testing his grip. Quill can hear the anguish in his voice, just barely kept in check. “It did. It had to.”

“Then where is it?”

“Someone must’ve taken it.”

“Gamora is _right there,_ ” says Quill. “I can’t just star-hop around the galaxy chasing an infinity stone that probably doesn’t even exist.”

“Why not? You’re a thief. If someone’s taken it, you could take it back.”

“Sounds like a real good way to waste my time.”

“This Gamora,” Thor leans forward, speaking with surprising intensity, “is not your Gamora. Don’t you understand that?”

“But she is _a_ Gamora,” Quill shoots back with equal intensity, leaning forward to match him. “We’re her _family,_ dude. Let’s say there ain’t any new soul stone, and there ain’t any way to get my Gamora back. This Gamora still needs us. Gamora’s _always_ gonna need us, and as long as she needs us, we’re gonna be whatever she needs. This ain’t about me.”

Thor actually laughs at that. “Keep telling yourself that, little man.”

“I’m not lettin’ this other Gamora go on thinkin’ she’s got nobody in the whole universe who gives a shit about her,” Quill snaps. “You wouldn’t get it. You only care about yourself.”

Thor’s eye gleams bitterly and Quill hears machinery spark deep in the belly of the ship. He knows it’s Thor’s frustration making the batteries act up, and he’s glad, not for the first time, that they’re on an M-ship rather than some goddamn Kree shuttle. Thor would wreak havoc on a ship than ran on slick computers with soft, artificial voices.

An M-ship, though. An M-ship is tactile. It’s all manual controls, foot pedals, and rubber grips. Quill can usually feel the vibration of the engines even when they’re not running too hot.

Right now, they’re barely running at all.

“I have lost so much more than you know,” says Thor. His voice is quiet, but it shakes. “My parents. My brother. The war against Thanos.”

“We won that war.”

 _“I_ won that war, and I won it too late.”

Quill stares. _He’s hurtin’,_ he thinks, _but he’s still a dick_.

“Tell me why we can’t go to that planet,” he says. He manages to keep his voice even, despite everything. “Tell me, I swear to fuck.”

Thor doesn’t answer for a long moment. He rubs his hands together, stares at the floor. Quill can tell something’s eating him up inside and maybe in a better mood he’d have some sympathy, but not today.

“Because it reminds me of my brother,” Thor says at last.

Quill scoffs and looks away. “Is that all? You goddamn hypocrite.”

Thor’s eye flashes with a cold, white light.

Quill’s intuition tells him he should stop there, but he doesn’t. He jabs a finger at Thor’s chest and speaks through gritted teeth.

“Wise up, sad sack,” he says. “You’re not in charge here. Now, I get wantin’ to run away from it all, I get that. I also get that you think you’re doin’ right by your brother. Well, you ain’t. Your brother’s _dead._ Accept it.”

Thor starts from his chair, but Quill stands first. His voice is rising, his accent thickening, and right now, Quill doesn’t much care. He stabs his finger at Thor’s chest again. “Your place is with your own kind, bein’ _their_ captain, and if you think you’re gonna come here and take . . . take my . . .”

His voice falters. Thor is still staring at him, his gaze level, and Quill shakily presses on. “This is my crew, Thor. Go be the king of your own damn kingdom. Your family’s gone and there ain’t any changin’ that, but I still have a chance at a family, and I ain’t about to let you take that from me.”

Thor slaps Quill’s hand away. It stings. “You tell me to accept my brother’s death,” he mutters, and Quill was expecting anger but all he hears is a kind of quiet, hopeless misery, “yet all you talk about, all you think about, is Gamora. _You_ are the hypocrite, Quail.”

“You can’t run away forever,” says Quill, and, hearing those words from his own mouth, he wonders if there might be an atom of truth in them.

Thor grunts quietly. He pushes past Quill and begins to descend the ladder down from the bridge.

“Don’t turn your back on me! I know a thing or two about runnin’ away!” Quill makes a vulgar gesture at Thor’s back, swiping his thumb across the crook of his elbow like an A’askavariian pimp. “You can’t run from who you are, Thor! You’re somebody’s _king!”_

His voice rings out in the silence. He’s alone on the bridge. May as well be alone in the universe.

“Man, screw this,” Quill mutters. “I’m goin’ to bed.”

Quill’s quarters are the largest on the ship, not that that’s saying much. There’s barely room for his bunk and a few personal belongings. All the same, the stale smell of recycled air is almost tolerable. There are enough fur pelts on his bunk to keep him warm, though never warm enough to forget he’s in space. He’s pretty sure he picked up the fur thing from Yondu, who came from a rainforest climate, and found that his joints ached if he didn’t nest up at night.

Not that it matters when Quill can’t sleep. He’s stripped down to his boxers, one leg under the furs and one leg out, lying on his belly and staring bleakly at the wall. His Zune is, for the time being, tucked away in his trunk, with the earbuds wrapped neatly around the body so they don’t tangle.

It’s lonely without Gamora. When she’d been with him, he found his room didn’t seem so small.

The first time they’d slept together had been Gamora’s _first_ first time. He’d been so desperate to be good for her, to do it right, and they’d stumbled awkwardly through the foreplay until both were flushed and breathless, struggling to contain their laughter. Gamora had held him in her arms and made him promise to just be here, be in the moment and not caught up in his own head, and they’d made sticky, adoring love on the fur pelts in Quill’s bunk until they all but passed out from exhaustion. He had learned that she loved his fingernails running down her back, and she had learned that he loved being smothered with kisses until he felt dizzy, and when they fell asleep wrapped up in each other’s arms they did so with the lazy certainty of two lovers who knew they had tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.

Quill’s eyes are wet. He wonders when that started.

Someone knocks on the door, the barest whisper of knuckles on metal, and Quill hastily dries his eyes in the fur of some sort of Xandarian weasel. “Come in,” he says, propping himself up on one arm. He quickly pulls his other leg back under the covers and tries to look well-rested.

The door slides open with a badly-greased squeak. It’s Mantis. Her hands are folded neatly in front of her, and her eyes seem sad. “Peter?”

Quill groans, rubs his eyes with the heel of his hand. “Yeah, hey Mantis. What’s up?”

“I thought . . . I’m sorry.”

“No, no, what’s going on?”

Mantis hesitates in the doorway, then steps forward. “You are having trouble sleeping?”

Quill blinks at her blearily. He’s had The Talk with her before, about not letting her empathy stray into other people’s brains without their consent, but the fact is, they’ve all been on edge, and Mantis has difficultly reining herself in at the best of times. “Yeah, a bit. It’s fine, though. Hope I didn’t wake you up.”

Mantis shakes her head. “You didn’t.”

She sits down on the edge of Quill’s bed. Quill awkwardly sits a little straighter.

“If you want,” she says, a note of hesitancy in her voice, “I could give you sleep.”

Quill’s heart sinks. “Aw,” he mumbles awkwardly, reaching out to touch her shoulder. “Mantis, you, um. You don’t gotta do that.”

“But I’d like to. If I can help-”

“Mantis, that’s what you did for _him.”_

“I don’t mind it,” she says earnestly. Her antennae are glowing with a soft, vaguely hypnotic white light. “Really. It is nothing to me.”

Quill swallows. It’s an uncomfortable notion, letting her give him rest. He thinks of Ego, reclining in his brain stem palace, falling into a sweet and easy sleep. The thought of following in his footsteps, even in so little a thing as this, is unnerving.

On the other hand, he’s so tired he can’t even see straight.

“Are you sure?” he says hesitantly.

Mantis nods.

Quill gives her a shaky nod in response and reclines back into bed, feeling uncomfortably aware of her looming over him like some sort of alien nanny. “Just . . . one time,” he says. “Just this once.”

“It’s okay,” says Mantis, her voice lighter than air. “Go to sleep now.”

Her fingertips brush his forehead.

Quill closes his eyes.

_You’ve got to stay here. Please._

_He runs down the hall, out the door, across the grass. He runs from his cell to the nearest porthole and watches Terra drop away behind him. He runs from every bounty on his head, from every clip around the ear. He's a match looking for something to strike against._

_You’ve got to stay here. Please._

_Here is where Mom dies. Here is where he has M &M pancakes every morning. Here is where he has a bloody nose and a black eye and a toy gun that shoots bubbles on a hot summer day._

_He has no friends. Not in this school, or the last school, or the school before that. He doesn’t know what a piña colada is but he knows that he likes them. They killed a little frog that ain’t done nothin’ so he punches them in their stupid purple faces and he doesn’t care who knows it. She didn’t have to die. They didn’t have to do it._

_They threw her off a cliff. Smushed her with a stick._

_She hits him on the battlefield and he ain’t done nothing._

_You’ve got to stay here._

_Please._

_Peter runs._

Quill wakes up alone.

He blinks, staring straight ahead as the ceiling comes lazily into focus. Then he scrambles to sit up, his furs in disarray around his waist as he looks for Mantis. She’s gone. The starcalendar by his bedside confirms that he’s been asleep for almost fourteen hours.

It’s the most well-rested he’s felt in days. If he had a dream, he remembers none of it.

Quill collapses back into bed and stretches, running both hands through his hair with a groan. Someone is pounding on his door again, this time far more loudly than Mantis, and the last thing he wants to do is answer it.

“Who is it?” he yawns.

“It’s me.”

No elaboration follows. Quill rolls his eyes and gives his arms one final, achingly pleasant stretch over his head before relaxing. “Yeah, come in, Drax,” he says, raising his voice a little.

The door rolls back, squeaking against the metal as it goes. Drax is so big that he obscures Quill’s view of the hallway. He has to stoop and hunch his shoulders when he sidles into the cabin.

Quill sits up and swings his legs down so he’s sitting on the edge of his bunk. “Something wrong?”

“I am bored,” says Drax, his voice grim. His arms are folded, and his skin has a healthy blue-gray sheen to it. He's been sleeping a lot since Thanos got dusted. “When will the ship be repaired?”

Quill yawns again. He covers his mouth with the back of his wrist. “Yeah, um. Rocket said she should be up and running soon.”

Drax exhales through his nose and sits on the edge of the bed next to Quill. There’s no such thing as modesty on the _Benatar-_ everybody’s seen everyone else’s everything, except Rocket, who even showers clothed- but Quill nonetheless wishes Drax could pick up the concept of personal space. “It was your own childishness that caused the collision,” he says. Yeah. Personal space.

Quill’s eye twitches. “Mmm,” he grunts, looking at the ground. The stale oxygen feels cold on his bare skin; he wishes Drax would give him a chance to get dressed before having _this_ conversation. “Yeah. I know.”

“Good.”

Quill runs a hand through his hair, gripping it tight at the scalp before letting go. He feels drained. “I got in Thor’s way,” he says dully. “Sonuvabitch wants to depose me as captain.”

“It doesn’t matter. We follow you.”

“Thanks.”

“I am going to ask you a question.”

“Go on then.”

“What do you want?”

Quill blinks, taken aback. “I . . . what?”

Drax frowns, considering. He looks steadily at the wall across from them. Drax, Quill has found, oscillates from stern, quiet steadiness to boisterous good humor, often without warning.

“I find it difficult to know what I want, now that Thanos is dead,” he says finally.

Quill slumps. “Yeah, I get that.”

“I do not think Thor knows what he wants either. He has cut his tethers, and now he drifts from star to star.”

“He’s scared. He’s scared, so he’s runnin’.”

“He cannot run from who he is. Neither can you.”

"He's somebody's king," Quill mutters bitterly.

Drax smiles calmly and continues surveying the empty wall across from them, as though pleased with what he sees. “Thor is a man. He would make an excellent captain. But he is no threat to your place among us.”

Quill swallows. He reaches out and squeezes Drax’s knee. “Thanks, man,” he croaks. “‘Preciate that.”

“Would you like a hug?”

“I- excuse me?”

“I would like to constrict you with my arms in an amiable way.”

“Uh, that’s fine. I don’t- oh,” Quill wheezes, suddenly squeezed tight between Drax’s arms.

It’s not entirely unpleasant.

“For such a large man, you are incredibly soft and pliable,” Drax says in wonder.

Quill can feel Drax’s voice vibrating deep in his chest, and something slow and strong that must be his heartbeat. Drax isn’t showing any signs of moving, so eventually Quill awkwardly maneuvers his arms around Drax’s back and rests his chin on one scarred shoulder. His skin is cool and roughly textured.

“This is nice,” says Quill, after the hug has gone on for far too long.

“Yes,” says Drax at full volume, making Quill jump. “I would often do this for my Kamaria, to remind her that although I was the greater warrior, she had nothing to fear from me. It is good for children to be held with great care.”

Quill, whose cheek is now squished into Drax’s shoulder, frowns as he tries to figure out if that should be insulting or comforting. Drax could certainly snap him in half if he wanted to. There’s something oddly reassuring about knowing that he won’t.

“Are you going to answer my question?”

“What question was that again?”

“What do you want?”

“What do I want?” Quill laughs weakly. “What do I want?”

_Her,_ he thinks. _Her. Her._

“I just want the music back, man,” he says, very quietly.

“Yes,” says Drax. “I miss her too.”

He lets go of Quill. They sit side by side, not talking, listening to the rattle of the air vents.

“I loved my Kamaria,” says Drax, after a moment.

Quill, oddly missing the contact, puts his hand on Drax’s shoulder. He wonders what emotions Mantis feels when she touches him. All Quill can feel are the muscles moving beneath the scars.

“I took her to the farthest places of my homeworld. We went everywhere together. I showed her mountains, jungles, rivers,” Drax holds his hands out before him, as though cradling something. “When she grew tired, I carried her.”

He looks Quill in the eye. Quill swallows, overwhelmed by the depth of rage and helplessness behind his placid expression. His eyes are like chips of ice.

“Yet Thanos _dared_ to call himself a father.”

Quill squeezes his shoulder.

“Now that he’s dead,” he says, “you oughta put your strength to better use.”

Drax stands up, the sudden movement tempered only by his evident resolve. “Revenge was the best possible use.”

“I dunno, man. We’ll think of something,” Quill says fondly, letting his hand drop. He watches Drax prepare to leave, but doesn't do anything to stop him. “Let’s get you into some honorable duels. Or semi-honorable ones. You know, I bet Krags can get us into that fight club on Contraxia. How’s that? A little hardcore street combat’ll make you feel better.”

Drax’s eyes brighten at that, just a little, but he says nothing. Quill breathes an internal sigh of relief. He lets him leave and doesn't badger him about it- Drax comes and he goes, singleminded. He doesn’t pretend to spend a minute longer anywhere than he needs to.

Quill’s eyes follow Drax’s arms before the door slides shut between them. They hang loose at his sides as he walks- always ready for a fight, even on the _Benatar_. Quill’s skin prickles at the memory of the hug and he rubs his arms, a little uncomfortable with how Drax had held him. Like a kid, or a reluctant teenager.

He must’ve been a real good dad, if he’d held Kamaria like that. Quill hadn’t given it much thought before. Yondu hadn’t had that kind of gentleness behind the strength. He was the stuff of starships all the way

_down but he’s still on his feet, swaying, until Yondu gut-punches him hard enough to knock the air from his lungs. He chokes, staggers, and hits the deck with a thwap that reverberates across the bridge._

_Peter is fourteen and he fucked up real bad._

_Cap’n’s gotta teach stuff and this is what Kraglin likes to call a “teachable moment.” Peter’s been around for more than a few of those. Yondu calls the whole crew together and they all get in close and watch him beat the shit out of Brahl, or Horuz, or Retch. Most cap’ns flog their insubordinates. Not Yondu._

_Whoops and hollers of approval ring in Peter’s ears. Yondu’s boot catches in his ribs and Peter curls in on himself, unable to catch his breath enough to cry out. A second kick lands hard enough to make his body jolt, but not enough to flip him over. Yondu’s boots swim in Peter’s vision. The rubber soles are stained with every color of blood._

_Punitive beatdowns are quick, public, and flashy, and they’re even more so when it’s Peter in the hotseat. Sure there’s the occasional clip around the ear when Peter gets too full of himself- “Don’t break yer back suckin’ yer own dick, boy,”- but Yondu only ever hits him, really hits him, in front of a crowd. It’s like he’s trying to make a goddamn point._

_Peter’s vision is getting really hazy now. Someone is screaming for Cap’n to hit him again, but he’s already down. He could swear he hears whistles from the crowd, but that’s beyond the pale even for them. Yondu won’t be goaded into killing him._

_Peter has to believe that._

_Yondu usually talks during these discipline sessions- that’s part of the pageantry of it. He talks himself up. He mocks, he boasts, he belittles. There’s none of that today. This time, he’s silent as his men grow louder._

_Then, real quiet, so only Peter can hear._

_“Get up, boy.”_

_Peter can’t see anything but boots at this angle but the boots haven’t moved an inch. Yondu says shit like that sometimes, whispers it real low during the worst of the beatdowns, just for Peter. Peter knows he don’t do it for anyone else. Not even Kraglin._

_This time, though, it almost sounds like he’s pleading._

_Maybe it’s wishful thinking on Peter’s part._

_“Get on up,” Yondu repeats, ever so quietly. His voice sounds rougher than usual and Peter realizes he’s actually speaking Terran._

_Peter’s head is ringing, and he can taste blood._

_He plants one palm firmly on the cold metal deck, and pushes himself_

up and out of bed, dressing himself with the slow haziness of a man with a lot on his mind. Perhaps Drax had a point, about the role that a gentle touch had in a kid’s development. Especially out here in the black.

Yondu was defined by his restraint as much as anything else. Quill never respected that, not even as an adult, when they were pulling grifts together in all the shadiest spots in the galaxy. He showed restraint when he let that arrow fly. He showed restraint in negotiations, in combat, in finance. In sentiment, too.

Quill purses his lips in thought. He sits on his bunk again to lace up his boots while he thinks. It’s not that Yondu _hadn’t_ touched him with affection. Sometimes he swept his hand through Quill’s hair and complained about it getting too long. Sometimes he slapped his back, squeezed his shoulder. Sometimes, when Quill was very young, he would would cup Quill’s face and neck in his hands, and Quill knew that meant, _calm down, wise up, and get to thinkin’ a way outta this._

That was about as close to gentle as he ever got.

Sometimes it’s hard to think of Drax as a father- any attempt to imagine his daughter just made Quill envision a smaller, bluer Drax, maybe with eyelashes and a bow on her head- but now and then he’ll say things, or do things, that make Quill wonder.

Quill stands, tired, but thoughtful, and more than a little hungry. There’s a cloth-wrapped blade leaning up against the wall by the door- he makes a mental note to move it later, or it’ll fly around the cabin once they get moving- and he taps it lightly with one hand on the way out the door, humming a few bars from "You and Me". It’s become more of a ritual than a habit, now. Every ship needs its rituals.

He’s been keeping her sword sharp. She’ll need it when he finds her.

The main deck- what Quill likes to refer to as the “family room”- serves as galley, situation room, interrogation chamber, surplus cargo storage, training facility, plant nursery, and dance floor, depending on necessity. It’s stale and a little grimy and the engines groan in a particularly worrying way over here, but the acoustics are good, and it’s one of the few rooms that can accommodate the whole crew and then some without anybody rubbing elbows.

There’s a long, broad rectangular counter in the center of the room. When Quill walks in, he finds it already occupied by an extensive and apparently long-running poker game. It’s Kraglin, Nebula, and Groot this time, and Groot’s winning. He’s just on the cusp of adulthood and has taken a liking to feeling “grown-up,” so Quill’s been teaching him Contraxian poker. It’s been serving him well, judging by the candy wrappers he has stacked in front of him. Probably helps that trees don’t have tells.

Quill drags up a forth chair and ducks under the counter, resurfacing a moment later with a dry protein bar and a bottle of hard soda in bright, radioactive green. He cracks the cap on it and leans his elbows on the table. “Nebula’s bluffing.”

Nebula’s face is impassive, but she gives Quill a faintly accusatory look before returning to her cars. “This is our game,” she says. “Do not expect to be dealed in.”

“I am Groot,” says Groot, which Quill takes as assurance that he will be.

“Reckon I liked him better when he was a twig,” Kraglin mutters. He flicks a toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other. “You been teachin’ him to count cards, Peter?”

“I learned from the best,” says Quill. Kraglin scoffs, and lays his hand on the table. He always did fold quickly.

Nebula stands and goes to mess with the stereo settings. In so doing, Quill realizes that “Come Sail Away” has been playing very quietly, on repeat, and when Nebula sits down again she’s turned it up but has made no effort to change the song. He wonders if this is a particular favorite of hers; she, like Rocket, had had Quill’s music for five annuals longer than he had.

Universal translators don’t work so good on music. Rocket and Nebula would’ve heard nothing but alien warbling. Yet here they are, five annuals on, and Rocket can mumble along to any song Quill can name.

Quill takes a long swig of hard soda and watches Kraglin deal out four new hands. It’s been nearly ten annuals- god- since Yondu joined the stars, and Kraglin still wears his reds. Apparently he’s been kicking around some distant galaxy, keeping Yondu’s disreputable legacy alive. That means getting into trouble, and getting into trouble means laying low, and sometimes, laying low means lurking in the belly of the _Benatar_ until they can drop him off at the next interstellar truck stop.

Sometimes Quill sees a feral shine in Kraglin’s eyes, like a man about to eat his crew. It scares the others, when they see it, but not Quill. He knows. He still wears his leathers too, and the flames- a calling card that gets the Guardians through doors that would otherwise be closed. Kraglin though, he’s more Ravager than Guardian. Quill suspects that he’ll be buried in those reds, with that same nasty look in his eyes.

Kraglin finishes dealing and Quill inspects his hand. The smudged holofoil glistens under his fingertips. Quill whistles, long and low, and slides his protein bar into the center of the table- his contribution to the pot. They go clockwise, each contributing. Brass buttons, strips of new rubber, little Gear Shift candies that were supposed to make antirad meds go down easier but didn't.

“Your play,” says Nebula, and Kraglin flips over the top three cards of the deck. Quill smiles. There had been a time, a long time ago now, when the faintly artificial rasp of Nebula’s voice had made Quill cringe. Not anymore. Now something about that low electrical hum is almost soothing. It makes him understand what people like about ships with AI. Well. Almost.

“I am Groot,” Groot says thoughtfully. He adds to the pot, and again, they go around. And again. And again.

Two hours later and Quill’s remembered why he doesn’t play cards much. His eyes are stinging from squinting at holofoil by the time he folds for the last time. Groot cleaned them out, to no one’s surprise- a shame, since he doesn't even have pockets.

Kraglin grins, runs his tongue along his teeth. “Well, that settles it. I ain’t takin’ _you_ to Contraxia.”

Groot’s leaves crackle when he shrugs. Nebula stares at the table, eyes wide and black and glassy. _Not glassy,_ Quill thinks. _Glass. Whole little galaxy of glass and wire and whirly-bits in there._

Quill stands, scooting his chair back with a metallic screech, and comes around the table to put his hand on Nebula’s shoulder. She doesn’t flinch. “Hey,” Quill says, “don’t worry about it. I learned him good.”

“Taught him well,” says Nebula, quietly.

“Whatever, man. Same thing.”

“Can you teach me?”

Quill blinks, then smiles. “Yeah! I can _learn_ you a thing or two. Card countin’, pool hustlin’, you name it.”

“Always could hustle pool better’n you counted cards,” says Kraglin. His leather creaks when he stands. “Cap’n had him hustlin’ pool ever since he was big enough to hold a cue.”

Nebula waits for Kraglin to sidle out behind her chair before leaning back in it, her gaze upturned to where Quill stands next to her. He feels a bit awkward, looming there like a ghost, so he leans against the wall and folds his arms, watching Groot scrape handfuls of candy wrappers into his arms.

“Was he a good teacher?” Nebula says finally.

Quill shrugs. “Better’n yours.”

That almost makes her smile.

Quill stays on the main deck long after the game has disbanded, leaning against the wall while he thinks on the past. Back when he was Groot’s age, he’d been looking for a fight anywhere he could. Yondu had stoked that fire as much as he helped trammel it. _That ain’t no way to go out, boy. You ain’t seen half the galaxy yet._

Now he’s a grown-ass man and he still ain’t even seen half the galaxy. Doesn’t feel like he ever will.

Quill gets tired.

All the time these days, ever since the snap. Always so tired, and sometimes even the euphoria of dancing doesn’t get his endorphins up anymore. Thor is like a stitch in his side, twisting up his guts and keeping him from moving the way he wants to. Holding him back. A tether.

_A tether._

Quill stares into the middle distance for a moment, his fingers tapping a restless tattoo on Clarice and Terry. Then he pushes off the wall with a little flick of his hips and makes his way down, back through the oppressively tight corridors to the docking airlock.

He unhooks one of the space suits they keep for emergencies- or for fun. Well, this probably counts as fun, so Quill clips one of them to his chest and depresses the switch. The containment field spreads across his body in less than a second, giving him a vague tingly sensation in his extremities. He hits the manual override for the main docking hatch.

The bay doors crack open with a high, piercing hiss of escaping pressure. Beyond that, the thin web of the airlock gleams purple against the darkness, and beyond _that_ . . .

Quill taps the chip at the back of his ear, and while his mask is solidifying, he cinches the loop of a spacewalking tether around his belt and ties it down tight. He could go without the tether- he’s done it before- but today he feels like he needs it. That extra little bit of insurance that he’s not going to float off into the darkness if his boots short-circuit.

He scrolls through the Zune’s options and picks a song. It sings out crystal clear through his mask’s internal speakers.

_Let’s dance in style, let’s dance for a while . . . heaven can wait, we’re only watching the skies . . ._

It’s like pure magic in his ears. Quill may have given up his power on Ego’s planet, but sometimes, when the music is _that good_ and the stars are aligned . . . it feels like an expanding of the senses, a hot, searing rush of divine potential. Quill feels like he could reach out and touch the stars, knock them loose from their moorings.

He steps up to the edge of the deck, looking out through the airlock at the unfathomable universe. The curling lines of nebulas paint messy cerulean streaks across the black.

“Mmm . . . sittin’ in a sandpit . . . life is a short trip . . .” Quill hums, eyes closed, swaying back and forth to the music. He steps through the airlock as easily as stepping across a threshold, and suddenly there’s nothing, nothing, nothing.

Quill opens his eyes and takes a deep breath. He lets his boots give him a little push as he spins out behind the ship, the tether unravelling as he goes. The stars stand steady as Quill falls through the black. They gleam like the ashes of Ravagers. The colors of the ancient nebulas spread like a canopy over his head, then under his feet, then around and around him, chromatic splashes across a star-strewn vacuum.

Out here, like this, the world doesn’t feel real. It feels like it’s just him, some wild consciousness, unfathomably old and terribly young, just discovering what it means to feel music and nothing else. All Quill can hear is his breath in his mask, and the vibrations of his heart, and the _can you imagine when this race is won?_ that sings through the speakers and makes his heart soar.

Arms out wide, he sails weightlessly up and over the back of the ship, to land in a silent crouch on the sloping metal roof. The ship’s still dead, but the people in there are alive. Alive, alive, alive, and Quill had some small part to play in that.

He stands up. Shoulders back, feet firmly planted on the roof of his ship.

_Forever young._

Quill breathes deep, the recycled air from his mask filling his lungs as he leaps backwards into space.

_I want to be forever young._

His rocket boots engage and he propels himself out into the unresistant void, eyes closed, unseeing. _Do you really want to live forever?_ The tether snaps taut and he follows it without thinking, swinging in a wide, graceful parabola around the starboard side. _Forever._ He laughs. _And ever._

Lights shine through the portholes of the _Benatar,_ flickering to life as he passes them. Quill can see the incandescent gleam of energy reacting with energy, the white-hot glow of the thrusters coming to life. He’s hanging on by a thread, and the ship is waking up. Rocket finally fixed her up.

Maybe they’ll leave him out here.

_Some are like water, some are like the heat . . . some are a melody and some are the beat . . ._

Quill closes his eyes and thinks of the lines around his grandfather’s eyes as he held back tears.

_You’ve got to stay here. Please._

_Stay in the hospital, in that room that smells of death and disinfectant. You’re going to want to run, run, run to the other end of the universe, run into the unspooling arms of our spiral galaxy just to get away from the pain, but don’t do it. Please, stay._

_Forever young._

Star-Lord ran, and Peter stayed.

Quill can see shadows moving beyond the portholes now. Silhouetted figures watching him as he hangs in the black, letting the music surge through his blood. Two of them- one broad and muscular, one thin and small- are standing in the airlock, waving at him. Gesturing him back in.

Quill smiles. Like they would ever leave him.

_You’re not somebody’s king,_ he thinks, as he drifts in for a landing. _You’re not somebody’s god. You’re not even somebody’s captain._

_You’re somebody’s family._

His boots hit the deck, and power off. His mask retracts halfway through the chorus, and Mantis laces her hands in front of her, smiling.

“I hope you had a nice spacewalk. Kraglin wishes to speak to you.”

Rocket and Groot are already up on the bridge, recalibrating the flight controls while Nebula triple-checks the life support system to see if it needs retooling. She’s gotten quite familiar with the _Benatar_ , even if the passage of time has all but erased any evidence of her and Stark’s brief sojourn here.

Thor is leaning against the wall, one boot against the metal, observing the proceedings with interest. He turns his head when Quill arrives on the bridge, and smiles at Drax and Mantis when they follow him up. To Quill, he gives only a cursory nod. Quill wonders if he’s still thinking about their earlier argument.

Kraglin’s checking the hailing frequencies, his long, narrow body bent over the table as he scrolls through channels. He holds one side of the headset up to his ear, scowling in concentration. Groot has the other side, just listening. Picking up languages.

Kraglin catches Quill’s eye when he walks up. He lowers the headset. “Finally got the damn radio workin’,” he says. “My boys have been tryin’ to reach me for a day and a half.”

“Tell ‘em we’re gonna drop you off soon as we're able.”

“It ain’t about that. They’re sayin’ they’ve got a tip about the soul stone.”

Thor’s head snaps up. His lips part in surprise as he stares, eye narrowing. Rocket’s ear twitches in Kraglin’s direction. “What kinda tip?”

Kraglin taps the headset idly against the desk. “They’re sayin’ a passel of junkers showed up on some dock a few lightyears away. They got a little frisky in one of Orin’s brothels and let slip that their boss snuck the soul stone off Vormir when no one was lookin’. Older guy, real fancy-like.”

Quill feels weak at the knees, but he doesn’t slump. He exchanges a look with Thor, then looks back at Kraglin. “Where’re these sons of bitches from?”

“Sakaar,” says Kraglin. He hesitates. “Same as Gamora’s signal, Pete.”

This pronouncement is went with ringing silence.

“That settles it,” says Quill. “We’re going.”

Rocket crosses through the center of the group, claws clicking on the floor, to go sit in the pilot’s chair. Thor’s visibly sags, his fists clenching and unclenching. Quill keeps his eyes on him as Rocket throws the _Benatar_ into J-gear, punching in the coordinates pinged back from Quill’s signal.

“So what’s the deal with this Sakaar place?” Rocket asks, conversationally.

Thor bows his head, and says nothing. Against his better judgement, Quill approaches him and squeezes his shoulder.

“She’s there,” he says, firmly and quietly. “Soul stone too. Just you wait.”

“Hey, Captain,” says Rocket. Quill turns to look. Thor doesn’t. “It’ll take a hell of a lot of jumps to get there. Hope you took your antirads.”

“You heard him,” Quill gestures wide with both arms. “Everyone buckle in, take your pills, hold onto your hats. Gonna be a rough flight.”

Mantis sidles up next to Thor and whispers something too quiet for Quill to hear. Quill ignores her, settling into a seat next to Kraglin and putting one boot up on the seat in front. “We’re in it now, Krags,” he whispers. “We ain’t got time to make a pit stop. Looks like you’re stuck with us for the time being.”

“Fuckin’ hate Sakaarians,” Kraglin mutters back. “Y’know, I hear one of ‘em’s the Collector’s brother.”

“Think he’s the one with the soul stone?”

“Gotta be, right?”

“I hope not,” says Quill. “Ain’t gonna be easy to steal if it is.”

He sees Nebula adjust the stereo settings once again, leaning across two seats to do it. She cycles through what feels like half the Zune’s archive before making a choice, and when the guitars kick in, Rocket lets out a whoop of delight. “Nice,” He grins. "Like it.”

It’s “School’s Out,” by Alice Cooper, and Quill couldn’t be more pleased with the choice. He mimes the opening guitar riff very badly, nearly elbowing Kraglin in the ribs with his enthusiasm. Just behind him, he hears Thor take a seat and strap himself in. Quill tilts his head back, looking at him upside-down, and mouths _well we got no choice, all the girls and boys_ at him with exaggerated glee.

“You’ll regret it,” says Thor, quietly, but without much conviction. “Going to Sakaar. That place is a deathtrap. Worse, after Thanos.”

“Newsflash, asshole, we’re all worse after Thanos.”

Thor actually smiles at that. Quill, grinning, turns back to face the front. “Alright, Rocket. Let’s jump.”

“Hell yeah,” says Rocket. He disengages the failsafe and primes them to get kicked into hyperdrive. Didn't strap himself in, as usual.

_Alright,_ Quill thinks. _Here we go._

He closes his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shout - Tears for Fears  
> Rubberband Man - The Spinners  
> Dear Mr. Fantasy - Traffic  
> Never - Moving Pictures


End file.
